CISSP Training Guide

Understanding Malicious Code

Describe and define malicious code.

To understand malicious code, you have to understand its authors, its impact, and the processes that have been developed to deal with it. Definitions abound in this area, and not all of them are agreed upon. For our purposes, however, we'll state the more common explanations and then explore approaches for dealing with them.

So, Who's a Hacker? What's Malicious Code?

Like any industry, security sports a lot of terms and jargon that everyone is sure they know the meaning of, and yet few can provide good explanations. Following are some explanations for some of them.

Hackers, Crackers, and Phreakers

In the past I've debated the terms hacker and cracker until blue in the face and I ...